


furniture

by DunkinNoNuts



Category: Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21614524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DunkinNoNuts/pseuds/DunkinNoNuts
Summary: Shoulder muscles bunch up in a funny knot after a shirt gets pulled up, and over, Piers' runny head. Peeling off the trousers from stiff legs is no easy task with frozen hands.Evaluate the knobbly knees, skim milk traces of picked-healed-picked-scab marks, the dips and folds of a scrawny belly pouch folded over by a slouchy posture.And his stray man laughs. Not unkindly. Runs burning palms down Piers' bare back.Piers shudders. An itch of anticipation tugs at his lower gut all piano-wire tight. He's gonna get played.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48





	furniture

Bundled up on a threadbare tweed couch, half-fetal-position and a lukewarm mug of oversteeped dreck hanging off a corner of a table, Piers' brows knit together. He nursed a fierce stomachache. Put him in a foul mood. Not that the day, or the noon, or the evening had been any kinder. 

2:01 AM. That's what his phone display says. 

Fucking cold, and the heater's meager tendrils couldn't reach far enough to penetrate his bedroom. Snow season wasn't here yet. Which made him feel even more bullshit for curling up on the cramped apartment couch, his body wedged between cheap fleece sheets and cushions that kept up their stale rank of scrubbed-out rodent piss from about a decade ago. Bless hell that the Morpeko had finally moved out, but his belly hurt worse when he imagined Marnie camping out in the sharp, nearly-Winter frost.

He shifted irritably, facing towards the scuffed up couch's backing. Obviously, lil' sis was a soldier. But it's not the weather that perturbed him as much as the idea that she'd be stoic about getting hurt by the cold. 

Real hypocrite hours, he grimaced. King of keeping it all inside. 

His thoughts teetered on the brink of a self-hatred spiral. Each corkscrew of fear slowly escalated, toothpicks of disgusts gouging in his too-loud brain: Obviously, she learned stoicism from him. Obviously, she might get hurt and not tell anyone because he never did and it was obvious and clearly-- clearly-- clearly--

Gnawing the inside of his cheek, Piers flips over again. Now he's facing out into the cramped living room. Barely enough space for the stifled yawn of pitch black night; if you exhaled too deep, you might end up bringing the whole place down.

"Fuck this," he said to no one in particular. Brought up a hand to smack against one of his pallid cheeks. Flatly, "Ouch." 

Fumbling for the cord of a lamp, he only succeeds in slow-slide-toppling out of the tiny couch, shirt half-pulled up by the friction. 

He blinks furiously when a lightbulb finally snaps on. Deep miserable pockets of exhaustion etched beneath his eyes barely make a dent in the sudden watery stinging wells that pool up. When he grimaces, his tear ducts dribble. 

_Real grown man dignity hours,_ said the intrusive thought. 2:48 AM. He'd set his curfew at 10:30 PM like a responsible adult. With no surprise at all, he'd failed to drift out to sleep. Like usual. 

Another shame-spiral pulled at him. Even though the lamp's uncanny shine broke through his downward spiral, a leftover intrusive thought poked him while he hurried to pull on a padded coat.

"Fuck off," he growls, slamming the apartment unit's door on his way out. Bit more of the plaster cracks off the walls. Fine, great. Goes right along with the gnarly, chipped down black nail polish that he keeps biting down to nubs. 

\--- 

Pacing furiously down winding sidewalks, a past memory sprig pushes out between the scorching cold gusts of wind. Even under the cracked glaze of street lamps, he could tell that flowers crawled out the broken parts of the street.

 _Savage gardens._ He'd called them that when he was a kid. Then when sis was born, she'd called them that, too. She was too little at the time to hear that the town leadership had been embezzling all the funds, don't you know, and that's why the sidewalks were total shit, like if you took a free pack of saltines and hit 'em with the butt of a spoon. 

Still. With all the cracks that held deep rivulets of dirt, flowering weeds could poke through, budding up fierce where they didn't belong. 

Piers itches pen and paper to scrawl a song lyric, but came up short. Not even a cache of crumpled receipts in his coat pocket.

His phone blinks drowsily on 4% battery life. 

Just hold it in, then.

\---

Town wasn't really big. If you take a walk, least depressing place you could head was the transit station.

As he approached, he squints. Melancholy drags the tension out of his shoulders. Someone's laying horizontal on the bus stop bench, ankles dangling out. 

He figures it's a homeless person. Odd, though; the soup kitchen kept plenty of flyers in circulation to inform locals of warm cots, no questions asked.

Still. Some people end up so down on their luck, they aren't even in the right headspace to feel welcome to use an open cot.

Eager to leave fast, Piers gets ready to rifle through his pockets to find some spare change to just put somewhere close by and then scram.

He finds a gum wrapper, crinkled concert bracelet, couple of over-stretched useless hair elastics, and there's a coin and if he could just pull out at least one more, then- 

"YOU--!"

Piers' eyes snap wide open as the prone figure swings up.

A crop of buzzed white hair, less like bleach and more like a broken body that stopped manufacturing as much pigment as a younger body should. Smashed up grin, but not like a possessed porcelain shell. More like, the stranger's unhinged expression thrums like a power generator; like a slug of kinetic energy cocked and aimed right at you.

Piers' lips ripple back into a teeth-baring snarl. Emits a guttural cry that cuts a swathe through the air, grabs a Pokeball from his waistband, gets ready to throw down--

And the stranger flashes his hands, palms up, universal gesture.

"Don't kill me?" a raspy voice says.

Tension suspends across them both. Hot gusts of visible breath fogs out, almost comical. Except this dumb lunk must be freezing, he's coatless and in baggy pants, and, even in the red hazy anger Piers mentally scorns this person's attire with the full brunt of anxious concern.

"Who-- Who're-- You scared the livin' _daylights_ out of me," snaps Piers. He doesn't mean to be an arse, but he's on edge.

Slow to the point of agony, the man on the bench pulls into a proper sitting position.

This guy. He's built solid.

Take away the team of essentially IV-trained bodyguards, and what's left is this grown bloke who could easily smash Piers to bits and pieces.

Still, the frosty air really did a number on him. The stranger's broad chest rises and falls in irregular, strained breathing.

"Think I took the wrong line in," chuckles the stranger. Sounds like a can opener. Sounds like the nighttime cold kicked the shit out of him.

"You got," and the man's chest rattles out a damp plumbing noise such that Piers' winces just to hear it, "Got any clue where I could kick the can privately?"

". . ." ellipses Piers, his face journey leaping through a series of pained expressions before slowly, irritably, offering his gloved hand to the stranger.

Sighing heavily, the official Gym Leader of Spikemuth Town mutters, "Can't die here. It'd look bad on my record. Just--" Every other service in the town would be closed down at this hour. "Crash at my place until the station opens again. But don't get hopeful. My place is crawlin' with bugs. Uh." He shrugged dourly. "Sorry."

The stranger grins, little less like rictus this time. Little more life-like. Swings to his feet and totters forward, shambling gait trailing after Piers' nervous pace.

"Yeah. Bugs are fine by me."

A heavy hand clasps down on Piers' shoulder and nearly sends him tripping over his feet. Between knots of irritation, he noticed that the stranger was burning up like a furnace. Better shove him indoors, ASAP.

\---

Kettle set to boil. A real plug-in kettle, none of that Ghost-type bullshit.

And then two mugs of generic brand Earl Grey tea are ready, set down, just like that. 

Earlier, Piers tried to proffer the wrinkled fleece blanket from the couch, but the stranger waved it off, spreading his legs out like he owns the place. 

With a fresh face in his beat up apartment unit, Piers nearly feels chagrined about the loud pipes and generator bellows. Carpet's faded out into a solid off-beige tone. Whole set-up feels dismal.

"This is all yours?" the buzzcut man asks, grinning, hand squeezing on and off the painfully hot cup. There's a handle on the mug, but he's acting too good for it, too tough to use a mug the right way. 

"Mm," says Piers, non-committal. He's staring at his phone, which was charging. 3:28 AM.

"Your family used to live here."

This wasn't a question.

"Cool, you passed a perception check," says Piers. He's still looking at his phone. Couple of new alerts. Social media. Nothing really important.

"That your daughter?"

Piers scowls. Even without looking up, and it's getting more than passive aggressive at this point, he can tell that the guy in the room (weird Alolan name, already forgot, and not like he's gotten a chance to sleep) has been scanning the solitary family picture frame that's propped up next to the crammed spice rack. 

"Uh, no."

And this time, he can palpably hear the horrible face-split grin as the stranger slowly says, "Kind of illegal for you to be dating her, right? Even for this town?"

Stunned silence.

Piers goes ape.

His phone flies across the carpeted floor with an audible crash as he grabs the fucker by the lapels.

Completely undeterred, the guy says, "Yeah, I _thought_ she was your sister." And more aggravatingly, because his prickly voice dropped the goading and faded out sincere, faded down quietly, "You're probably a great big brother." 

Flashes of white rage were still clearing out from the edges of Piers' vision. His knuckles were even paler from the vice grip. "Don't say shit like that. I'm always screwing up." 

Guzma's eyes crinkled. "You brought me inside when I was freezing. That's pretty damn noble."

"You'd be out in a second if you had anywhere else to be." Agonizingly slow, Piers tried forcing his hands to slacken. Failed miserably to let go. "Like I said. If you die, it messes up my town."

Those eyes of his -- and the stranger's name re-surfaces, snaps like a rubber band -- Guzma's glare drills right to Piers' core. Sets his pulse hammering faster than a metal tempo.

And that same smashed up grin emerges, a bitter slash dangling on a hook beneath the piercing glare.

Blood pounded ferociously through Piers' system. Amped up, caught up in the hot searing flash of being predator and prey simultaneously, his long nails dragged down, gliding down polyester fabric before snagging onto scorching skin.

"Why are you so fucking--" His sleep deprived brain caught him, dropped the 'hot,' opted into, "--overheated? Do you need to go to a hospital?"

Guzma played dumb. "Wow, Spikemuth's _got_ a real hospital, not just a glorified PokeCenter?"

"Uh," sharp exhalation, "No. No. We don't have that kind of funding." Piers pinches the bridge of his own nose, closing his eyes and looking stricken. 

Silence fell across them like a thick quilt.

"You can get real. I'm not gonna break, and we got at least 24 to 48 hours before I get a real virus or something," suggests Guzma. He's already shrugging off his layers, tossing them in the general direction of the wobbly kitchen table.

"I'm not actually going to throw you out," said Piers, miserably, flushing beet red. "I'm not a monster. You don't have to--" He's veering on the brink, thoughts escalating, ready to tip over and burst out in a collision of stress.

"Kill me," orders Guzma.

Leaning forward, Guzma trails a spindly hand from the top of Piers' head, down the length of his spiky locks, pulling at the straight ends painfully taut. 

Stirring from gut reflex, Piers' body responds with fingernails hooking beneath and trailing up Guzma's undershirt until it pulled up to his shoulders.

\---

By the time Piers' cell phone was recovered from the carpet, the time flashed 1:29 PM. Late noon cast a swathe of blinding light, sluicing like ice water over the drowsy, warm figures tangled up over the couch.


End file.
